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Hey! I'm Jillian Bejtlich. I’m a lifelong New Englander with a serious love of the outdoors, adventure, and a pretty serious inability to sit still. I’m plagued by the travel bug, and it seems I’ll try any relatively sane and safe thing once. My big goal in life: Get people outside!

Found: Snow in August

Want to know what’s even better than being exactly 4 months away from 7 weeks straight of snowboarding? Getting thrown in snow in August. Yep… snow. That awesome white cold icy stuff (no, not vanilla ice cream) I’ve been craving since about April 15th of this year. I, the awkward blogger of tenders and trails, got thrown in SNOW IN AUGUST! Be jealous!

Anyways… so here’s what I’ve been up to (and now I get to see just how well this blog is going to handle ramblings and pictures).

Last week I flew out to Oregon and Washington to photograph a friend’s wedding, and wow – it was a busy week! Between two red eye flights, some flights getting overbooked, a Russian Jewish wedding that was literally ENTIRELY in Russian, and driving over 1200 miles total, it made for an interesting week.

We started out Saturday with the Portland Dew Tour with some tickets I won the previous week thanks to Toyota Action Hub. Now, I’m generally a winter sport person and I’ll admit I can’t skateboard or longboard to save my life, and the few times I have tried BMX, I haven’t been able to do much more than kind-of-sort-of land on two wheels off a very small jump – but the competition was awesome! We checked out the BMX Park for the afternoon and were so thankful that the arena made sure there were no bad seats to be had. I wouldn’t have minded a VIP pass though. =) Or a media pass…

Portland Dew Tour - Practice time!

Sunday was the wedding which meant I had to miss the last day of the Dew Tour, but I’m hearing from my friends I missed the best day. We actually found them on some of the videos from the day getting high fives from the BMX Dirt competitors, so yeah… jealous.

Monday and Tuesday couldn’t have been more opposite, and that’s what I love about the Pacific Northwest. We traveled about an hour and a half West of Portland to get to a giant stump of a Sitka Spruce. Now, I know it sounds pathetic and boring, but seriously – look at the picture! This thing is hugeeee!!!

Giant Sitka Spruce

The rest of the day was spent at Ecola State Park trying to scheme how we could get to the parts of the inaccessible beaches that looked really awesome and untouched without breaking any laws. Unfortunately, we gave up thanks to high tide. But it was still pretty great – especially getting to see all the surfers. If I wasn’t so pathetically bad at swimming in cold choppy water, I’m pretty sure I’d be a surfer.

Surfers at Ecola

Tuesday had one goal and one goal only – find snow. Of course we did make a few detours. We climbed a waterfall (Multonomah Falls), took a tour of a hydroelectric dam (Bonneville Dam), and ate the best tomato soup ever (Timberline Lodge – it’s the hotel from ‘The Shining’). Finally, I was allowed near the amazing icy white stuff at 6,000 up Mt. Hood!

Multonomah Falls

The Amazing Mt. Hood

The funny part is that apparently my boyfriend had different plans for my reunion with snow. To the delight of many passing tourists, I got thrown into a snow bank, had some go down the back of my shirt, and generally got soaked – but I was smiling like a happy idiot the entire time. That’s what counts, right? =D

I have snow!!!

Wednesday through Friday we played tourist in Seattle, and sadly there were no more outdoor adventures. Just lots of amazing food, crazy homeless people (SHOOOOOOEEEEEEE SHINNEEEEEEEEE!!!!), hanging out with our friends, and a general lack of sleep. I’m definitely a country girl. Not a city girl at all, but had fun nonetheless!

Kerry Park in Seattle - Tip: Don't trust your GPS to find this place

Dinner @ the top of the Space Needle

So, now I’m officially stuck on West coast time and badly want snow, but guess what… 122 days!!!

A special thank you to Kristen, Tom, Arkady, Lilya, and Rob for an epic vacation!!! =)

About Jillian Bejtlich

Hey! I'm Jillian Bejtlich. I’m a lifelong New Englander with a serious love of the outdoors, adventure, and a pretty serious inability to sit still. I’m plagued by the travel bug, and it seems I’ll try any relatively sane and safe thing once. My big goal in life: Get people outside!